


Dean's Carol

by BurningTea



Series: Holidays and Occasions [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Christmas Carol, Castiel's Notebook, Christmas, Dean needs to learn a lesson, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, temporary major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has learned that a hunter can't have close friends or loved ones, not without being ready to lose them, so he decides it's safer for Cas not to be around. </p><p>Can the traditional visits from three ghosts change his mind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story for our Destiel Christmas Ghost stories which ExpatGirl and I decided to write some time back. I baggsied the Dickens' classic, because I have spent a lot of time reading it lately and I wanted to get some Destiel out of it. It has become...this. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and Merry Christmas, one and all.

Mist hung low over the area, clinging to everything like a shroud. It deadened the thud of the trunk shutting, the Impala rocking down on its wheels at the impact, and Dean set his hands on the black metal, leaning forward and letting his head hang down. The mist didn’t do enough to deaden Cas’ voice from behind him.

“Are you going to speak to me? Dean?”

He was weak. That’s what it was. If he had the strength, he’d have had this conversation with Cas a long time ago, back before it was too late, before he’d broken a creature who’d existed for possibly millions of years. He had to do this now, though, before he shattered what was left. Without turning, without moving his palms from where they pressed against the chill metal of his baby, he growled out words he’d planned and planned and replanned. They fell dead into the air.

“You aren’t coming with me. I don’t want you near me. This is the last hunt you come on, and the last time I see you. You understand?”

Silence answered him, heavier than the mist. 

“You understand?” he said. His jaw hurt with keeping his voice steady. Firm. Cas needed firm. Must be all those years of being a soldier. “No coming back to the bunker. You need to find someplace new. New people. New purpose. Stay away from me, Cas.”

“You…I…” Cas’ words stumbled to a halt, picking up painfully after a pause Dean tried to pretend wasn’t full of hurt. “You don’t want me?”

“Sam and me, we can’t be around you.” 

Cas had to get this message. It wasn’t just Dean who’d hurt Cas, not any more. And how he’d hurt the angel… He pushed down images of fists and pleas, of ‘Dean, please’ and a blade buried in a book. And Sam was hardly much better, what with talking Cas into doing that spell. They might have got rid of the Darkness, got Rowena to lift the spell from Cas, but the wounds had become clearer and clearer with every hunt Cas had been on with Dean since. Every time the angel flinched, or wavered, or came close to a panic attack he wouldn’t admit to, Dean set another stone in the wall he needed to build between them. Cas needed to be nowhere near the Winchesters, and Dean had to make it clear.

Straightening, he half-turned so he could see the beige and black of Castiel, not-quite ex-angel of the Lord. He caught sight of a frown, of slumped shoulders. 

“I got you a car,” Dean said. “I know you want your old one back, but Sam hasn’t found any sign of it. So. Here.”

Cas caught the keys, but it looked to be by reflex. Dean almost expected them to hit the guy and fall to the floor. He didn’t say anything, just looked down at the keys, a bunch Dean had spent months collecting, and back up at Dean.

“It’s the one at the far end.” So that Dean could get in the car and drive off as Cas walked to it. It would be easier that way. “There’s a bunch of stuff in it for you. Sam sorted a place for you stay, paid up until past Christmas. Paperwork and directions are in the car.”

“You’re sending me away?” Cas asked. 

“Yeah. After what happened? Yeah. It’s for the best. You gotta see that.”

Another pause. Another searching look at the keys. 

“I see,” Cas said. 

It was the heaviest thing so far. Cas must be thinking of all the harm Sam had done, of all the even greater harm Dean had done. Cas may not have Heaven on side, but once they heard he’d cut ties with the Winchesters, they’d take him back. And in the meantime, and if Cas didn’t want to go back, he’d have a home and space to make his own connections. Dean had read over the papers Sam had prepared. The house was in a nice place, with culture and community and all that shit. Cas would be better off. The only thing Dean hadn’t looked at was the address, so he couldn’t be tempted, so Cas could make a clean break.

“Good,” Dean said, his voice gruff. He coughed and made eye-contact for the first time. Or tried to. Cas was still looking down at the keys. “Go check it out. The car.”

Cas turned without comment, hesitating for a moment before setting his foot deliberately on the gravel and heading in the direction Dean had said. He didn’t slow or turn back. Dean’s throat worked, but he kept it in, what he was feeling. Better for Cas if this was clean. 

As Cas reached the car and unlocked it, Dean made his own move. With the practice of years, he was in the car and had the engine running before he even saw Cas look up. That was the only glance he allowed himself. Better for Cas. Better for everyone. Dean turned his eyes to the road and drove.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam ran his hand over his face and grimaced. He had that look on his face that said he was about done and ready to find extreme measures, but Dean refused to let this spin out of control.

“So he moved on,” he said. “So what? He was meant to, wasn’t he? That was the whole point of this, for him to move on.”

“He wasn’t supposed to slip off the radar,” Sam said, sounding frustrated. “Look, Dean, I know we said we needed to stop hurting Cas, but I didn’t want to cut ties with him completely.”

“Yeah, well. He wanted to cut ties with us.” After all, he hadn’t said anything, had he? Hadn’t protested when Dean had said they couldn’t see each other any more. He’d probably been relieved. “And moving out of that house? Pretty clear sign he’s moved on from us.” Dean raised his glass of whiskey in a toast. “Good for him. About time someone got away from us without dying to do it.”

Although that wasn’t entirely true. Cas had died plenty. 

“It’s only been a few months,” Sam said. “For all we know, something’s got to him. It’s not like Cas is Heaven’s most popular, you know?”

“Not when he left,” Dean said, pushing aside the image of Cas catching those keys, of Cas looking down at them like he didn’t understand what they were. “But who knows by now? He’s swung back into fashion with them before. You remember those groupies calling him ‘Commander’. At least some of them must have hunted him before that.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “Yes. But last time he asked the other angels for help and got tortured. I don’t think we can play the numbers on this one, Dean. And it’s not like angels are the only things that might go after him. Hell, Crowley probably still wants him dead or suffering, and with the Darkness sorted and Hell more or less ironed out, he’s got the time.”

“Crowley,” Dean snorted.

“Yes,” Said said, his expression settling into a hard line. “Crowley. The guy who killed Sarah Blake because we had the demon tablet. You remember her? You liked her. You said you did. And he killed her, when she wanted to get home to her kid, to her husband, because we had his tablet.”

Dean felt that churning of dark guilt he often got when he was forced to remember that the guy he’d almost put on his list of family, even though it was the part of the list headed ‘this one’s a dick and should die at some point’, was also the guy who’d murdered so many innocents and taken pleasure in doing it. 

“So?”

“So Crowley isn’t your friend, no matter how long you spent in bed together,” Sam said, seeming to miss Dean’s flinch at that expression. “And he goes after people with the tablet, long as he’s got time. And last I heard, Cas had the tablet.”

That was something Dean had been doing a pretty good job of ignoring. Cas out there on his own, being hunted… But no. No. Cas was better off without them. He’d got himself out of pretty much every attack and torture attempt, and what that said about the life he’d had around the Winchesters was enough in itself to mean Dean had done the right thing. 

“He’s better off without us,” Dean said, his tone flat. “Drop it, Sam. If he really needs help, he’ll call us.”

Sam’s expression said he didn’t really believe that, and Dean had to call up his memories of the times Cas had called, had to hold them bright and clear and solid in his mind, so that he could keep his faith in that statement. He had to bury all of the times Cas hadn’t asked them for help, either hadn’t through choice or because he wasn’t able. 

Cas was safe. Safer without Sam and Dean. He was. 

“I said drop it,” Dean said again, and he turned on his heel and left the library.

He didn’t get far before his guilt bubbled into anger, sending him veering off from his room and down to the range. Several clips poured into the targets did nothing but ratchet the anger up higher and higher, his thoughts cascading round in a furious loop. Cas hadn’t argued about being given a new life. Cas hadn’t tried to call. Dean had told him to stay away, sure, but when had Cas ever done what he was told? 

But Cas was right to do what he was told with this one. Dean was too dangerous for the angel. 

But he hadn’t even tried to call.

Dean unloaded another clip, hitting the target dead center every time. With each bullet, he bundled up another stray thought, another unwanted line through his head, saying Cas could have called, that Cas could have tried to argue. No. Cas was better gone. Cas was better gone. Dean was better with Cas gone. He was. 

Not that it was just Cas, of course. Dean had hurt Sam, too, over the years, and just because Sam had hurt him back sometimes didn’t make it okay, just like the times Cas had beaten Dean didn’t make it okay. Because Cas had been trying to save Dean from himself, or else had been so messed up and mind-controlled that he’d had no choice. But Dean? That had just been him, letting go of the parts of him that kept him in check, letting everything bad and dark and twisted take free reign. 

He shouldn’t have stopped at Cas. He should have told Sam to leave, too. Then again, this bunker was Sam’s home, whether the kid was willing to admit it or not. Dean had no right to take it from him. Cas? It’d never really been Cas’ home, had it? 

Maybe, where he was, Cas had a home now. Somewhere without Dean. Somewhere safe.

By the time he was done with shooting, Dean ached. He dragged himself to the shower and then to his room, avoiding the library with Sam in it. Sam who would likely start on about tracking down Cas again the moment he saw him. Instead, he curled himself up under the covers and told himself again this was for the best. 

Cas was safer without Dean.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean stumbled out of bed mid-morning, his head pounding as though he’d been drinking. He almost wished he had. At least then the dull, throbbing pain would make sense.

He was two mugs of coffee in before he realised how quiet it was in the bunker. Sam was usually up way before Dean was, his energy and determination sending him out on runs or back to the books, depending on what was happening. He’d half expected to find Sam at the laptop, still, hot on some trail of paperwork or sightings. Something. 

Instead, when he trailed back to the library, taking a proper look this time through, he saw Sam’s books left in a sprawling heap, scraps of paper and half-scribbled notes all over the place. On top of the closed lid of the laptop, one sheet of lined paper was folded in half. Dean saw his own name across the top.

With a tightness in his chest, he picked it up and unfolded it. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to find Sam’s handwriting. After all, who else would, could, have written it? Still, it was a surprise. It hit Dean that he should have checked on his brother again last night. He should have made sure Sam had no foolish plan.

Now he was too late.

The note was short. Pretty short, anyway. 

“Dean,

I can’t get a lead on Cas. I’m heading out to the house. Going to see if I can get something when I’m there. I really think you should come, too, but I’m not going to push. 

I’ll see you when I see you,

Sam”

 

Damn. Fuck. Sam had gone tearing off after Cas, and either Cas didn’t need Sam, or… Cas didn’t need Sam. He held firmly to that thought. 

And he certainly didn’t need Dean. 

No way was Dean going to hare off after Sam. What did Sam think he was? Stupid?

No, if Sam wanted to dash off, then he could, and Dean would even let him go. This time. It was about time he got himself right on that. Even if it was just over a week until Christmas and he’d planned on at least cooking a meal this year. Just for the two of them. 

To keep himself from getting so wound he needed to shoot the targets again, Dean set himself to tidying up Sam’s books. For a smart guy, he was massively messy. And there were all sorts of books out, too, of ghosts and witches and faeries and djinn. Dean had no idea what Sam had been looking for, but he’d seemed to be looking for it everywhere.

Whatever it was, he must have given up looking. Usually, Sam put the books away when he’d found what he was after, but here they were scattered all over.

It took Dean quite a while before he’d got the place neat, and then he turned to giving the kitchen a good scrub. After all, just because Cas was gone, and Sam was gone, and no-one but Dean would be seeing it, didn’t mean leaving it in a state was a good idea. 

By the time evening rolled around, he’d more or less tired himself out and was ready to collapse in to the chair in the corner of the library, a glass of whiskey in hand, because why the hell not? Not like there was anybody around to get pissed at his drinking. 

He was on his fifth glass when the lights flickered.

“What-?”

He jerked, turning and scanning the room. Then laughed. 

He was going soft, jumping at a surge in the electricity. Stupid. It was just too easy to get worked up for no reason, after a life of fighting monsters and hell and God knew what else. Well, God maybe did know, but he sure wasn’t doing anything about it. 

Another sip of whiskey and he had himself settled down, sinking until his head rested against the back of the chair. He was alone, sure, but at least he was comfortable.

The lights flickered again.

Oh, now that was just too much. They’d never really sorted out where the lighting and heating and whatever else came from, which had always bugged Sam. Come to think of it, they should have asked Cas, but other things had kept coming up and it had seemed like such a trivial thing to ask an angel, even one that Dean sometimes ordered around like a subordinate. And now Dean was on his own with no chance of working it out. 

Maybe he should have gone with Sam, just to have someone to talk to so he wouldn’t be all over the place in his head.

Nah. Another whiskey would sort it.

This time, when the lights flickered, they were joined by a bang. A clanking, ringing bang, from deep inside the bunker. And another bang. And another. 

On the fifth bang, with back straight and shoulders tensed and hands digging into the arms of his chair, Dean made out the high, scraping sound of metal on concrete. What the fuck?

He considered running, considered making it up the stairs before whatever it was could reach him, but some part of him rebelled. He’d faced too much, far too much, to cut and run from his own home. 

Hesitating for only a few moments was enough for the sounds to reach the hallway just outside the library, and Dean felt his breath stutter. He trembled. He’d faced the devil, and now he trembled. What was wrong with him?

Another clank, and a shape appeared in the doorway. A shape draped in chains and bound about by padlocks and other objects, each one clanking as the creature moved. It took a long moment for it to step into the light, and when it did…

“Dad?”

Dean felt his legs give way and landed heavily in the chair. Before him, wrapped up in those chains, stood John Winchester, exactly as he’d looked the last time Dean had seen him, in that graveyard with the hell’s gate open and evil pouring out into the world. 

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

Dean didn’t feel cold, didn’t feel the shiver he normally got from a ghost. His dad didn’t seem like a ghost, either. He looked solid. Solid and covered in chains. Now that Dean looked closely, John’s chains carried guns and knives and supernatural symbols, each one fashioned out of the same heavy metal as the chains. 

“I’ve come with a message, Dean,” John said. “Someone’s got it into their head that you need a word of advice to stop you ending up the same way as me.”

“What?”

“That all you got to say to me?” John asked. “Thought I taught you better than that. You really had all the words shocked out of you by one spirit turning up?”

“You’re a spirit?” Dean cursed himself, especially at the look of disapproval on his dad’s face. “Right. Yeah. Course you are. But you don’t seem like a normal ghost. And I gotta say, Dad, the chains are new.”

John Winchester smiled, and for a moment Dean got the feeling that his dad might have been up to making a joke about that, once upon a time. Now he thought about it, Dean’s dad and Dean himself weren’t that far apart in age. Far closer, obviously, than they’d been when John had been alive. That was the thing about the dead: they didn’t age. Didn’t learn, either, much of the time, but here John was with a message for Dean. That alone was enough to keep Dean in his seat.

“I’m not a normal ghost, Dean, no,” John said, as though humouring him. “What I am is far past the point where I can lie to myself. Hell will strip away a lot of your illusions. But you know that. And then Heaven took care of most of the rest. And what I learned? I’m not everything I could be. I made a mess of my life hunting that yellow-eyed demon, and even if it hadn’t been part of some cosmic plan to screw over my children, I still wasn’t going to get much out of it. Don’t get me wrong, Dean. Hunting monsters? That’s something special. But I let it push away people I cared for, who cared for me, and that was a waste. I made monsters my business, and that was right. But I should have made my family my business as well. And I didn’t do that. I’m here to tell you not the make the same mistake.”

“I don’t get what you mean. I’ve put family first my whole life.”

“First? Maybe. But you haven’t let them in.”

At that, Dean sat in silence for a while, no idea what to say. After a wile, his dad sank down into the chair opposite and the two of them sat there, not speaking, just…looking at each other. Dean wondered what his dad was seeing, if he noticed the lines around Dean’s eyes and the way he’d broadened out. He wondered if his dad was disappointed. 

Finally, John spoke again.

“Listen, son. You’re going to be getting some visitors. Three of them. They’ll turn up over the next three nights, and you won’t have a choice, so you might as well face up to them. I came to warn you, so you wouldn’t try to kill them. They’re not something which can be killed. They’re not something which should be killed. You need to hear them out. You listening to me, Dean?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

Though he wasn’t sure why. His dad was dead. Yeah, that wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker for Dean. Wasn’t like people coming back from the dead was unheard of. Dean practically had a full set of stamps in his book. Sitting down to talk with someone who was still a spirit, about three more spirits, wasn’t common. 

“Good.” John sounded satisfied. He stood and walked to the wall, where a space opened up. Dean could still see the wall, but he also knew there was a space there. He could see figures moving in the space, as though at a distance, and John turned, beckoning Dean closer. “Look. Look, Dean. Souls who’ve made my mistakes. See the chains? See how they wail with loneliness?”

Dean nodded, unable to ignore the voice he’d obeyed for so many years.

“You don’t want to end up like that,” John said. “Listen to the visitors, Dean. I don’t want to see you chained by loneliness.”

And with that, John turned and stepped forwards, and was gone.

Dean slumped back into the chair. He sat there for a long time before he gathered the strength to go to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

A sticky pool of drying whiskey ran cross the beside table, catching the light from the hallway in a dull gleam. Dean didn’t even care if you could have a dull gleam. He shouldn’t be able to have a crowded emptiness, but that’s what he felt like. 

He lay in bed, bundled under the covers with the blanket tucked right up to his chin, but it did nothing to warm him. Since his dad had stepped into that wall and vanished inside it, he’d felt a chill right through his bones. It was cliche and stupid and painful as hell. He’d know. And it wouldn’t stop. It would even ease a fraction to let him sleep. 

He’d found himself straining his hearing for the sound of another chain from deep inside the bunker. 

There was no chain. Instead, a yellow light grew in the darkest corner of his room, flickering up from nothing until it sprang almost as tall as Dean would be himself, standing up. 

“Dean?”

The voice was old and young, a multitude and a single speaker, and Dean stared, frozen, as it drifted towards him. As it came closer, he saw its face emerge from the light, young and wise and old at once. It flickered, its face shifting and its form changing, and it looked to have a thousand legs and none, a wrinkled face and the smooth skin of a child, wings at its back and nothing but that light.

“Are you the first spirit?” Dean asked, his voice hoarser than it had any right to be after years of hunting. Still, this thing was in his home, and he’d been waiting for it on his dad’s orders. Neither of those things was usual. “What the fuck are you thinking you can show me?”

“Dean,” the spirit said, its many voices echoing and fluting. “Dean, you will come with me. I will show you what you need to see.”

“I need to see you gone,” Dean said, curling his hands into fists under the bedding.

“No,” the spirit said. “You do not.”

It was close enough now that Dean could have reached out and touched it. Instead, he shrank back. It did no good. The creature stretched out one of its thin, wavering hands and stroked a hand along Dean’s forehead, trailing cool fire across his skin. It felt familiar. He couldn’t quite say why. 

After a moment’s drawn out pause, he scrambled backwards, falling in a tangle of bedding and limbs on the floor on the other side. No. No, not the floor. He landed on asphalt and ragged grass, the raised edge between them digging into the meat of his thigh. 

“What…?”

Pain made itself felt, lancing up his arms from each palm, and he clamped down on a cry as it passed. 

When it was done, he looked up to see the ghost flickering a few feet away, its benign calm more frightening than a hundred murderous looks. He knew what to do with those. Behind it stood a low, cheap looking building, a neon sign flashing bright letters in the sky. 

“You brought me to a motel?” Dean asks. “Why?”

In answer, the ghost turned and drifted away, and Dean got to his feet, slowly as though having to watch his balance, and, after another second of resistance, followed. 

The ghost vanished through the door. Not the doorway. The door. Frowning, Dean put out his hand, and watched as it slipped right through the wood. Huh. One of those things.

After previous experiences with this sort of shit, he stepped into the room beyond with barely a shudder as he slipped through what should have been solid wood. 

Inside, two beds with orange striped sheets sat against the far wall, a small figure curled up against the headboard of one them with his eyes closed.

“Sammy?”

Sammy didn’t look up.

“He can’t hear you, Dean,” the ghost said. “We’re not really here. We’re visiting shades of the past. Those from the present can’t interact with the past.”

“Tell Cas that,” Dean muttered, but he let it slide. 

The phone rang on the bedside table and the shade of Sam blinked his eyes open, sitting up and staring at the phone as though he wasn’t sure whether to answer it. After a few more rings, he sighed and reached out, lifting the phone from its cradle and pressing it to his ear.

“Dean?” he asked, then, as his shoulders slumped. “Hi, Dad.”

Dean wanted desperately to hear the other side of that phone-call. He had no memory of where he was, couldn’t bring this particular motel to mind, but there’d been so many. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam said. He was hunched into himself, but the pinched look on his face spoke of the simmering rage Sam could be filled with. The kid hadn’t quite learned how to hide it at this age, not like he got so good at doing later, to the point a load of people thought Sam was the calm, reasonable one of the brothers. “Is Dean coming home soon?”

“Where am I?” Dean asked. 

The ghost didn’t answer, and Dean pressed his lips together. Fine. But if this spirit wanted him to learn some lesson, it was going to be a lot harder if Dean didn’t even know what was going on. Maybe he was at Sonny’s. Sam could be about the right age. Even with how well he knew his brother, memory was fickle and he’d been smaller himself, had seen people Dean’s current age as nearly as old as the hills. It was harder to judge Sam’s age in this vision of the past than he wanted it to be.

“Yeah. Right,” Sam said into the phone. “It’s just, I miss him, Dad.”

That didn’t seem to be the right thing to say, and Sam flinched, his tiny shoulders hunching, before moving the phone away from his ear and staring at it sadly. 

“I miss both of you,” Sam said, quietly, even though he couldn’t know there was anyone around to hear. 

Sighing, young Sam curled himself up into a ball on the bed and closed his eyes. Dean wished really hard he couldn’t see the silver sting of tears.

“He missed you, when you weren’t here,” the ghost said. 

“He’s my brother,” Dean said. “Of course he did.”

He couldn’t work out why he needed to see this. Sam lonely wasn’t news. Hell, after that thing with the imaginary friend, Sam’s loneliness as a kid was already engraved in Dean’s mind. He didn’t need the front row seat. 

It was a relief to move on, but when they landed again it was to a low, grey building with blinds at the windows and gold lettering across the glass. Dean almost thought he knew this place, but there had been so many places over the years.

“All right,” he said. “Where the fuck are we now? This going to show me someone else all mopey because I’m not around?”

The ghost just drifted off, leaving Dean to follow.

He walked through an open door this time, finding himself in a corridor lined with message boards and almost white paint. An office. Not really a surprise, but he though he recognized this one. 

Moments later, the ghost turned into a large room, divided by cubicles, and Dean’s mouth dropped open. He did remember this. He spent time here. Months of it, when they were on a case which just wouldn’t let itself be solved. His dad had left him working as some office dogsbody, tasked with getting information from company records. This was back before Dean had ever played the role of FBI agent, back when they’d been a lot less direct, or had just skipped it all and broken in. This was one time his dad wouldn’t break in. 

Music sputtered into being, rising to a near wall of noise in moments, and Dean covered his ears for a second before realizing it was Christmas music. Loud, brash and likely to give anyone a good reason to drink. 

With that clue, he spotted tinsel hanging from desks and ceiling fans, people sidling up to a table against the far wall that held a bowl and cups. 

“An office Christmas party?” Dean asked. “Really?”

Again, the ghost said nothing, and Dean found himself drawn to the conversation two women were having nearby.

“Screw the reports, Kate,” one said, an older woman with long dark hair and green eyes. She was pretty and short, someone Dean’s current age, and he regretted not remembering her. Younger Dean might not have noticed her, but he did. “It’s Christmas. The reports aren’t the end of the world.”

“They need filing,” the other woman, Kate, said. She wore a skin-tight dress, which, fine, in the right setting would be great, but Dean couldn’t remember dress-codes at this place being so lax. Young him hadn’t paid as much attention to the people as he could have, apparently. “They should have been done already.”

“Deadline’s not until January 4th,” the other woman said, and her smile was just tinged with irritation. “Live a little. No sense it rushing all the way through life and missing the damn thing.”

“If everyone just cared-”

“Kate,” the other woman said, cutting off what sounded like the start of a Class-A rant, “not wanting to get everything in seven thousand years before each deadline is not the same as being crap and uncaring about work. All right? Now shut up and go get some eggnog. I’m ninety percent certain Tracey just dumped a bottle of vodka in it. See if that can loosen the stick in your ass.”

She pulled the sheaf of papers from Kate’s hand, turned her, and pushed her towards the table at the far end of the room. Kate went.

Dean followed, leaving the cute woman behind and craning his head around to see where he was. He was certain he was here somewhere. 

He couldn’t see himself anywhere in the main office, though. 

When he glanced back at the ghost, it was right where he’d left it, watching him. Fine. So he was going to have to work out why he was here by himself. If he was here. Well, if past him was here. He was almost sure he’d worked here, but he couldn’t really remember a Christmas party. Maybe he hadn’t been here on this night. Perhaps the hunt had wrapped up. Perhaps…

There he was.

Through a crack in a door, Dean caught sight of his younger self, leaning over someone who was cast in shadow, the side of his mouth curved up. Flirting. 

Fuck, but he looked young. It wasn’t like their dad had taken many photos, and even when cell-phones turned into computers and everyone started taking selfies, Dean only had a few snaps. From back in this time? He’d hardly got anything. So he found himself staring at the smooth cheeks, the bright eyes, the lightness in his own body. It hurt. The way he leaned over the other figure, not boxing them in to threaten or contain, just to share space, hurt. 

His younger self threw back his head and laughed, and he understood why people used to say the things to him that they did. That hurt, too. 

A whisper of cold at his side drew his attention, and he turned to see the ghost next to him, sympathy on its face. 

“Shut up,” Dean said. “Don’t you go being sorry for me. Look at me. Young me is awesome.”

He pushed down the pang at what his young self still had to go through. Other people went through hell. Well, Sam did. Cas… Cas did. In his own way. 

Young him moved back, pulling the other person up, and a woman with chestnut hair and round cheeks smiled up at him. As Dean watched, she curved a hand up to young Dean’s cheek, leaning up to plant a kiss on his lips, and Dean remembered.

“Dawn,” he said. “I remember her. She helped me out, told me…”

She’d told him he should get himself a degree, is what she’d told him, described all the exciting things her sister was getting up to in college on an engineering degree, and Dean had listened. Fuck it, but he’d listened. And this was a night he’d made himself push aside, because this was the night…

“She told me to go for it, had forms I’d asked about. This is the night she gave them to me. Fuck. Why are you showing me this? So I can watch myself nearly betray my dad again? God, do you know how close I came to…to running off to school? If Dad hadn’t called me…”

And it had been tonight. John had called and pulled him out, said the hunt was done. On the night of the Christmas party. He hadn’t really remembered that until now. It hadn’t been important. But he did remember, vaguely, telling his dad about the party, that he was looking forward to it. Sure, he’d made out it was something he was making the best of, and his dad had laughed at him, said hunters had to find their fun where they could, and then he’d called him when Dean had only been at the party for an hour or so and told him to haul ass to meet his dad back at the motel. 

As he watched young him, he saw Dawn reach for her bag and pull a pack of papers out, holding them out to young Dean with a smile. And young Dean smiled back, and reached out for them.

Dean jumped as a phone blared. 

It was his. Well, young his. His dad had called just as he was reaching out for those papers. He watched his younger self pull back, fumbling for his phone and smiling an apology at Dawn as he answered. He still couldn’t hear what his younger self said. He wasn’t close enough. But he saw the way the light dimmed in his eyes, the way he ended the call and took Dawn by the shoulders, regret clear on his face.

He saw the way he left the papers in Dawn’s hand when he left.

But no. No. That couldn’t be right. He flirted with the idea of going to college, of course he did, just like he flirted with Dawn, but he never really thought about it. He left those papers of his own choice. He knew he did.

Didn’t stop him seeing his younger self walk away because his dad called, though. 

Dawn looked sad, staring after Dean for longer than he’d have expected for someone he’d only known for a few weeks. She looked genuinely sorry to see him go. And he’d never known. Maybe it was the chance he was throwing away that she was sorry for, or maybe she really would have liked him to stay for herself, but either way it was a look he wasn’t used to seeing.

He found himself wondering, just for a moment, how many other times in his life he’d missed similar looks, from people he had no memory of now. 

“Is this what you wanted me to see?” he demanded, turning on the ghost. 

It shrugged. 

“What’s that meant to mean? Hey. Don’t you fucking drift away from me.”

But the ghost was withdrawing, moving back out of the doorway and into the office proper. Fuming, feeling a prickly heat under his skin that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, Dean followed.

And stepped into a room he recognized all too well.

“You didn’t,” he said. “You bastard. I don’t need to see this.”

Before he caught up with the ghost, a young woman with a mass of curly black hair danced into view, spinning and gesturing to someone behind her. Her smile made Dean’s heart ache. Cassie Robinson.

He braced himself and barely reacted when a slightly older version of himself from the one in the office danced in after her, pulling a stupid face that made her laugh.

“Oh, you like that?” his younger self asked, grinning as he danced his way to Cassie and took hold of her hips. “Because I’ve got more.”

For a minute, they danced together, not quite in sync but close enough that most people wouldn’t notice at first. God, she could move. He hadn’t let himself think about her in years, and now here she was, dancing with...well, with him, in front of him, and God but Dean’s life was screwed that he could make that observation. 

“You can move, Dean, I’ll give you that,” Cassie said, throwing her arms around his neck and smiling against his lips. “Want to see what other moves you can show me?”

And Dean remembered this, too. This was the moment he ruined his chances with her, the moment which, even though they didn’t break up for a while longer, got the nail ready to go in the coffin, so to speak. This was when Dean decided to tell her the truth. 

He watched Cassie kiss his younger self, watched his younger self kiss her back, pulling her in close like he never wanted to let her go. It was corny and sappy and cliche as hell, but he knew younger him was thinking maybe, maybe she was the one for him. Maybe he could get out of the life, or at least find a way to get one foot out, to be with Cassie long term.

Cassie pulled back, taking Dean’s hand and guiding him out of the room, but they only made it as far as the doorway before they were over each other again. It wasn’t something Dean had felt in years. He remembered how it was, to press himself against someone who roused that passion in him, and who made him want to stroke her hair and cook her food and hold her when she was sad. Someone who he felt wanted to do the same for him. 

It wasn’t just years since he’d felt that. It was all the way back to Cassie. Even with Lisa, much as he cared for her, it wasn’t like this. He was too broken and it was too forced. 

Cassie was back before he broke. 

“Get me out of here,” he said, knowing his voice was gruff and not caring. 

This time, the ghost listened to him, the room vanishing around him in a swirl of smoke as Cassie wriggled out from younger Dean’s hold and guided him out of the room, that smile still on her face and a glint in her eyes that reminded him how hot they’d been together. 

When the smoke cleared, he span around and fixed the ghost with a glare.

“What the fuck? Why’re we still here?”

Because they were still in the house, still in Cassie’s home. This wasn’t what he’d asked for. He already remembered how stupid he’d been to decide to tell her. It wasn’t a lesson he needed to learn again. 

A high-pitched cry rang out, echoing around the hallway, and Dean span to face the doorway in time to see a small girl spill out into the space. She had a plait down her back and a pair of blue dungarees. She also had a striking resemblance to Cassie.

“Abigail, you come back here!”

Dean stepped back as Cassie followed the girl he was increasingly sure was her daughter, scooping her up and wiping at her mouth with some tissue.

“You come back and finish your food,” Cassie said. “Daddy will play cars with you when you’re done eating.”

“Did you bring me here just to see she’s happy without me?” Dean asked. 

His pain over this was a over a decade old, even if you didn’t count hell. But it still stung. 

The ghost settled a hand on Dean’s shoulder, and this time when the smoke cleared it was the library in the bunker Dean saw.


	5. Chapter 5

“Fuck,” Dean said, picking up a glass form the table and splashing whiskey into it. 

He downed it in one, pouring more before the burn from the first helping had even started properly. Not that he got much of a burn these days. 

He didn’t bother going back to bed. His dad had said the ghosts would come over three nights, but no matter what Sam always seemed to believe Dean did, in fact, read. He’d bounced around enough schools to miss anything approaching a standard education, and one thing he did know was that this country had no such thing anyway. Hell, some books he’d read three times, all in different grades. But he’d read a bunch of classics, including A Christmas Carol.

And the Oz books had turned out to be based on fact. 

It took him forty minutes to find any reference to it in the archives, and the book which mentioned it hardly said anything worth knowing, but it gave him a lead. The next book wasn’t even about Dickens’ novel, but it mentioned some creature that sounded like a cross between a Trickster and djinn. Dean couldn’t find any way to kill it. It didn’t seem like the writer of the book thought one was needed.

It was coming up on an hour as he scanned the entry, trying not to glance at the clock. Knowing to expect the second ghost in the same night didn’t make it any easier. Every time he thought he heard something, he twitched. 

With five minutes to spare, he grabbed salt from the kitchen and poured it into a circle around his chair, hefting a fire-iron when he was done. This wasn’t really a ghost, not if he was reading it right, but he couldn’t find anything else to try.

He sat in the chair as the clock chimed one. 

Light spilled out from under the door to the next room. Which was fucking stupid, because there were no doors to the next room. It was just an archway. Now, though, tall wooden doors sat in the space, with that warm light sneaking under them.

He wasn’t going anywhere near it. Now he thought about it, Scrooge had gone to the second ghost. For all Dean knew, he’d be left alone if he just sat here. Had to be worth a shot.

That thought lasted for a matter of minutes. The doors burst open, flooding light into the library, and Dean looked up to see a huge man, bearded and robed, almost filling the doorway.

“Will you not come to me, Dean Winchester?” the ghost asked, his voice booming. It sounded like plum pudding and port and Dean wanted to stick a knife in it. “Come, man. Join me and be merry.”

“I was merry as a fucking elf until you showed up,” Dean said, crossing his arms. The fire-iron sat across his knees.

“You don’t know the meaning of the word!” the ghost said, in defiance of a lot of Dean’s memories of bars. “You must come with me. You must drink from my horn.”

“No offense, pal,” Dean sneered, “but I’m not putting my mouth anywhere near your horn.”

That barely set the ghost back at all. It was like he’d deleted Dean’s comment as soon as it was uttered. Instead, he crossed the space between them and stepped right over the salt line, his robe billowing in a breeze which was certainly not there. And he took hold of Dean’s arm.

“You will join me,” the ghost said, and hauled Dean up.

When he landed on his feet, he stood in a town, in a place with bustling streets and shops with seasonal window displays. People wove through the crowd, carrying bags and boxes and the slightly manic air of people who know they have a lot to do and that on top of that they’re supposed to look happy about it. None of them were managing it. 

“Where the fuck are we?” Dean asked, angry at the thread of worry in his voice. 

Salt did nothing, then, and he’d not managed to use the iron, but the ghost hadn’t seem worried about it. 

“Where you need to be,” the ghost said. “Look around you. What do you see?”

Dean looked. He saw people. More people than he’d been comfortable being around in years. 

“What am I meant to be looking for?”

The ghost laughed, as though Dean had told a wonderful joke, and grabbed him arm again. This time, the world stayed solid around Dean and he found himself pulled across the street and into a bar. The ghost dragged Dean right into the main area, and it turned out to be somewhere swisher than Dean normally hung out. It was more a place he might have gone with Lisa, back when they went out for the odd night with friends.

Sure enough, when he turned around he saw a crowd of people hugging and slapping each other on the back, showing the first signs of genuine delight he’d seen since the ghost apparated him here. 

A guy with a smart wool coat only a few shades darker than his skin grinned at a smaller, lighter man near him, pulling him into a hug and rocking him, as though the pressure of his arms alone wasn’t enough to show his happiness. When he let go, he turned and held out his hands to a woman behind him and…

Lisa.

She looked as beautiful as Dean remembered, warm and solid and real in a way so much of his life had never been. He knew, now, that a lot of what he’d felt for her had been longing. Longing for a life he couldn’t have. Sure, he’d loved her, and for herself, not just for the house and the kid and the illusion he could be normal. But it had never been the way it was with Cassie, and he’d turned up on Lisa’s doorstop a wreck, more patient or stray than lover. She’d been better for him than he’d deserved, and she’d been right to tell Dean it was done.

He’d never been sure if taking her memories was the right thing, and he’d got less sure the more Cas let slip about the mess inside the angel’s head from all the times he’d been mind-wiped. 

Still, right move or not, Lisa looked radiant. It was a stupid, old-fashioned word, but it was true. She wore a deep blue dress that shimmered when she moved, a necklace catching the light as she stepped forwards and pulled the lighter guy into a hug. But what really made her glow was her smile, just as warm and huge as he’d ever seen it.

“Matt,” she said, when she pulled back. “It’s so good to see you. How’s Jamie?”

“He’s doing better,” Matt said. “Still moaning about being at Death’s door, but I’m pretty sure Death isn’t stopping by any time soon. I tried that soup you suggested. Tomato rice? It helped. A recipe from your mom?”

“No,” Lisa said, and stopped, her face troubled for just a moment. “No, I don’t know where I got it from. But I’m glad it worked.”

And she was happy again, chatting with the people around her and throwing her head back to laugh. 

When they moved off to a table, Dean made to follow, but the ghost held him back.

“She’s happy, Dean,” the ghost told him. “Has her own studio and people working for her. Has friends and love and purpose.”

“And Ben?” Dean asked, his mouth suddenly dry. If Lisa remembered some stuff Dean had taught her, even if it was just soup, then what did Ben hang on to? Did he flinch when a tall guy got near him, worrying about being thrown up against a wall?

“Ben’s doing well,” the ghost said. “He’s going to be an engineer. At some point, someone showed him how to work with cars, and it started a life-long passion for mechanics.”

Dean had tears in his eyes as the bar melted around him. He hadn’t screwed them up. Not completely. They might or might not be better off with their own memories, and he knew it had been a shitty thing to do, taking them without even giving them a choice, but right or wrong it had worked out. Lisa and Ben were good. And they had friends, and purpose. And… They were good.

The bar reformed into a house, a small thing with a peaked roof and a wild garden. 

When the ghost set off for the house, Dean followed.

Inside, the hallway was dark, but the light from further on pulled him towards a room at the far end. As he got closer, he heard a voice. But…

“Sam?” he called out, even though he knew his brother wouldn’t hear him. “Sam, what are you doing here?”

There was always a chance Sam was on this weird vision quest with him.

But Sam didn’t answer. 

Instead, Dean stopped in what turned out to be the dining room doorway to see Sam rifling through paperwork at the table, one lamp all the light he had. 

“What are you doing, Sammy?” Dean asked. 

He stalked up to Sam and peered over his shoulder, his eyes widening as he saw the name at the top of the paperwork. Castiel. Sam was in Castiel’s home. Dean was in Castiel’s home. And by the look of it, Castiel wasn’t.

Sam’s brow was furrowed, his concern obvious, and Dean found himself trying to read over Sam’s shoulder. 

“Where are you, Cas?” Sam asked himself, looking on the verge of throwing the papers down and tearing the house to pieces looking. “Where’d you go?”

For the first time, Dean felt genuine worry. Cas had left without much fight. Well, without any fight. That had seemed like he’d accepted it, really easily, but Dean was now remembering what he’d tried to push aside before. Cas hadn’t argued when Dean had thrown him from the bunker, entirely without help, as a human. He’d just gone. So why would he argue now? 

Dean pushed that thought aside. Worse than the thought that Cas didn’t want to be around Dean was the thought that Dean had made Cas feel the same way. Because it wasn’t that. It was about keeping Cas safe. 

“Why’d you go, Cas?” Sam asked the empty room, pushing his hands into his hair and leaning on his elbows. He sounded frustrated. Worried. “Dean would’ve…”

He shook his head, sat back and pushed away from the table, not saying what Dean would have done, or said, or thought. Dean found he wanted to know the end of that sentence.

“Is he blaming me?” Dean asked the ghost. “Hey, Sam, are you saying this is my fault? You know he needed time away to heal. You know how much knowing us ruined him. Come on, Sam, Cas is older than dirt. You can’t blame me for him wandering off when we’ve given him a perfectly good house to stay in! It’s not like last time!”

But Sam, of course, didn’t hear him, and Dean wasn’t sure he believed everything he was saying, in any case.

He followed Sam out of the room and through to what turned out to be the living room. Sam flicked on the light, casting a warm glow over the space and revealing a small blue sofa, a dark coffee table and varnished floorboards. It all looked a lot more together and…well, stylish than Dean had expected it to be. A Christmas Tree sat in the corner, part decorated with tinsel and baubles as though whoever had it hadn’t been sure where everything was meant to go but had believed there must be a pattern to it somewhere. Cas. Cas would have done that. The thought of him trying to get a tree together formed a lump in Dean’s throat. He shoved it down.

“Why’s the tree only half done?” Dean asked Sam, the room, the ghost. “Why’d he leave it half done?”

Sam checked along the mantle-place, pulling a face as he found nothing, and moved on to the side-table, one drawer of which held envelopes. All Christmas cards. Dean watched as Sam pulled them out, opened them, and set each card out, on the mantel, on the coffee table, on the side table. All addressed to Cas.

How the hell did the guy have so many cards? He’d only been gone a few months. 

Dean turned away, some part of him not wanting to see the names signing each card. None of them were from Dean. He hadn’t even let Sam tell him where Cas’ house was, just in case, in case Dean was weak. Not knowing the address kept him from driving right off as soon as he thought of it, and that should be enough, he’d reasoned, to let him talk himself down before he arrived in Cas’ driveway. 

Turning away left him looking back at that tree. Cas seemed to have started decorating from the top down, the lower levels sitting bare and unadorned. Not for the first time, Dean had the dizzying realization that Cas looked at everything from the top down, as though he still sat up in his clouds and looked down on the world spread below him. Cas had been human, had been at the bottom, homeless and staring and hunted, and he still saw everything from s heavenly perspective. 

He still hadn’t really set his feet on the ground.

That was why Dean had had to let him go. Cas had to work out that he was better off without Dean. 

But why had he left the tree part done?

“Where’s Cas?” Dean asked over his shoulder. He didn’t bother looking to see the ghost was close enough to hear him. Ghost or spirit or Trickster or djinn… Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. “Sam’s worried. All of a sudden. So where’s Cas?”

Sam cursed, and Dean turned to see cards scattered at his feet. Fuck, Cas had enough cards to scatter. Despite knowing it was pointless, Dean knelt to help pick them up, his hand brushing over the nearest ones uselessly. Some were open on the names, on the cheery little messages about peace and happiness and best wishes, signed by Marie and Katie and Charlie and Sam.

Wait.

Dean knew that hand-writing. Sam. Sam, the dick, had sent Cas a card, and the note in it didn’t sound like it was to someone he hadn’t seen in a while. Sam and Cas had been in touch. Without telling Dean. 

That was why Sam was worried. He had been hearing from Cas, and now he wasn’t. 

Cold unease slithered in Dean’s belly. If this was Cas acting out of character, and not just him carrying on with the random disappearing acts he’d always been prone to, then it explained why Sam had been so insistent they find him. And the tree was only half done. 

“Come on, you bastard,” Dean said, his voice tight, “You tell me where Cas is. You show me.”

“I can show you many things, Dean Winchester,” the ghost said. “But remember how you felt seeing Cassie Robinson with her new family. Are you sure you want to see the angel?”

Dean felt his face crease into a scowl.

“You saying Cas has run off to get himself knocked up with a kid?” 

“You told the Seraph to leave,” the ghost said, still in that jovial tone of voice, and that was a mindfuck when spouting truths Dean really didn’t want to hear. “You told him to stay away from you. What does it matter to you what he’s doing with the life you’ve insisted he take?”

“What is he doing?” Dean said. Growled, almost. “You think I wanted him gone? He’s one of the best things to ever happen to me.” And that thought slithered oddly in his head, the undertones only hitting Dean once he’d said it. “Doesn’t mean I want him hurting, or kidnapped, or…or… Fuck.”

Dean broke off, pressing his palms to his head and casting his gaze upwards, as though there had ever been anything up there to help him. Anything but Cas.

“Do you have any idea the kinds of shit Cas can get himself into? The number of times he’s got himself fucking tortured and had to kill his own way out because I…because I didn’t know where he was?”

The ghost said nothing. He didn’t have to. Dean couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. 

“I sent him away,” he said, low and pained. “I sent him away, with some crap about him being safer, and maybe that would have been true once, but that was before I had him turn his back on Heaven. It was before… God, it’s not like Cas needs my help to get in trouble.”

“But he’s safer without you,” the ghost said, every word sincere. “Safer and with more chance of being happy. Isn’t that so, Dean? See the cards and the home. See the chance he has of finding his own place.”

“I see it,” Dean said. “What I don’t see is Cas. I was wrong. Okay? All three of us, me and Cas and Sam, we can get into deep shit with no help from anyone but our own fucked up selves. What we need is each other to patch up the wounds.”

Not that Cas had ever let Dean do much of that, either. Not that Dean had known how. He wasn’t sure, now he really made himself face it, how much of sending Cas away had really been sending away the guilt at not knowing how to help Cas through his struggle after watching Hannah die, after being told to his face that every other angel hated him, after Dean almost killed him. 

Dean almost killed him, but…he came back. There had to be some reason he wanted to be near Dean.

“I need to see Cas,” Dean said. 

Because whatever this was, it had shown him scenes from his past that rang true. It had shown him Sam in this house. There was a good chance this was reality, and Dean had to act as though it was, for now at least, just in case it told him something he needed to know. 

“I need Cas,” Dean said.

This time, he looked at the ghost, and the ghost nodded, and smiled. And the house vanished.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean blinked at his surroundings, seeing a hall filled with tables and benches, empty at the moment but with dirty bowls set out. As Dean took in the sight, a door at the far end cracked open and a woman stepped out. She looked familiar. Her smile was warm.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said over her shoulder as she stepped down into the space. “It’s so good of you to come. And really good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

Dean’s gaze latched on to the space behind the woman at that sound, drinking Cas in as he followed her through. His hair was combed and his clothing, a dark red sweater and dark jeans, looks unfairly good on him. Normal. Unfairly normal and human. He looked pleased as he smiled at the woman, one of those small smiles that curved one side of his mouth up more than the other, crinkling his eyes at the same time.

“Thanks for dropping everything and coming at such short notice. Paul was upset to have to rush off to him mom, but with a broken leg and no-one at home he had to be there. And you really don’t mind staying until Christmas is done?” the woman asked. She stopped and nudged at Cas with her elbow, rocking him and smirking. “No-one to get back to?”

Cas shrugged.

“My family are… It’s complicated, Nora.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, I just bet it is. I remember you sleeping in the store-room. Don’t look at me like that. I knew. I just… Well, we all have hard times. But you got back in touch with them? Sorted some things out? Not that you have to say, Steve, not at all. But I did worry when you vanished like that.”

“My apologies,” Cas said, not so much at blinking at being called Steve. “Something came up. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Now it was Nora’s turn to shrug.

“I admit, I kind of hoped to hear from you. Maybe hear you’d sorted out whatever had you out of touch with your family. And I was thrilled to get your letter the other month, get back in touch. People kept asking after you at work. But it’s important to work things out with family.” She leaned in, even though Cas was tall enough she had to tilt her head back to see him from that close. “And when I say family, I partly mean that tall and beautiful example of man who called by and helped you babysit that first time. You never did tell me the story there, but the way he looked at you…”

“Um. Yes. Well.” Cas’ smile became strained.

Nora’s smile slipped, too, and she stepped back, something like sympathy on her face.

“Obviously, not my business,” she said. “I just thought, lovely man like you, if your friend did see you the way he looked at you, well…”

“That’s complicated, too,” Cas said, and the rueful note in his voice made Dean wonder if the angel actually knew the implications of the phrase. 

Had Dean been in a romance all this time and not known? Was he Cas’ ex to this woman? To Cas? Who the fuck knew what angels thought made up a relationship, anyway. 

“Screw him,” Nora said, and maybe didn’t notice the way Cas’ eyes widened at that. “If he doesn’t know what he’s missing, that’s his problem.”

She patted Cas on the arm and walked over to one of the tables, gathering bowls and plates as Cas stood where he was, his expression thoughtful. After a moment, Cas shook his head and set about clearing one of the other tables, but Dean couldn’t help think his friend had added some new level of understanding to a thought. 

Dean watched Cas clear the table, unused to being the one getting to observe Cas without him knowing, and in light of what Nora had just said… Well, it was only natural he’d maybe check out the pull of Cas’ sweater over his shoulders, the way it somehow revealed Cas’ biceps more than the outfit he normally wore. Sweaters weren’t known for being good at showing someone’s body, but compared to that bulky beige thing it was golden. And the jeans were far from bulky.

When Cas leaned over to reach a bowl on the other side of the table, Dean felt his face grow warm.

“I’ve shown you the angel,” the ghost said, appearing at Dean’s elbow and making him jump. “He isn’t being tortured. He’s making his own way. This is what you wanted, Dean. You can be happy in the knowledge that Cassie and Lisa and Castiel don’t need you.”

“Cas didn’t say he didn’t need me,” Dean said. “He just said it’s complicated.”

But he didn’t know why he was arguing. The ghost was right. He’d cut Cas loose to give him a chance at finding a life which wasn’t as full of pain and suffering as the one he had around Dean, and it seemed to have worked out pretty well. Cas had even gone back to see an old friend, even if Dean hadn’t known the woman was important enough for Cas to stay in touch with. Dean should take this as a win and demand to be sent back to his seat in the bunker. He didn’t need Cas any more than Cas needed him. He had his whiskey and Sam would come back once Dean called him and told him Cas was fine. 

Dean didn’t need anyone else.

But fuck, he’d been lying to himself, thinking he didn’t want Cas. 

“Get me out of here,” he said. 

He’d been stupid. No surprise there. He’d thrown Cas away and sent the guy back to people who’d never known him as Cas or Castiel. What if Cas had left his little house and gone to settle full time back in Rexford? He had to know more people than Nora, and even the one friend was more than he often got with Sam and Dean. And Sam would stay in touch. He’d just hide it from Dean, like he had been already. 

“I said, get me out of here,” Dean said. 

He felt the world around him dissolve and reform, and was standing outside, cold nipping at his hands and snow flurries biting his cheeks. People in bulky clothes stood around nearby, the sort of clothes people dug out to wear when they had no other options. Bearded faces and ragged hair and a gauntness which came from having meals reduced down to almost nothing told Dean who they were before he turned and saw the sign for a soup kitchen on the building nearby. 

“Why are we here?”

The ghost simply nodded back at the door to the building, and Dean looked round to see the door open and Cas step out, holding the door open and gesturing the closest people inside. 

“You brought me to stand outside the same fucking place?” Dean asked, scowling. “My issue wasn’t being inside, you-”

“Pay attention, Dean,” the ghost said, sounding sterner than he had before. “You won’t learn your lesson if you don’t pay attention.”

“Lesson?” Dean took a step towards the ghost, not quite able to keep his gaze from flicking back to where Cas was listening to a woman with a small child, the look on the angel’s face caring and attentive. “What lesson? That Cas doesn’t need me? You just told me that. You just told me, and showed me, that none of them need me. What’s the point of hammering it home more?”

The ghost stepped back, regarding Dean as though he was insignificant, and it made Dean’s finger’s itch. If he was so far below this thing, whatever it was, then why was it bothering with him in the first place? He took it in, his eyes raking over it, seeing it’s holly wreath and its full beard and its twinkling eyes. And it’s wrinkles. The grey streaking its beard and hair. 

“What the fuck’s up with you, anyway? You weren’t old when you first showed up.”

A memory stirred and Dean narrowed his eyes.

“That shit about the ghost of Christmas Present getting old during his visit? That true? Or are you just using what’s in my head from that book to create this wonderful mystery tour?”

The ghost shooks its head.

“Does it matter? What I’m showing you is truth. My time here is almost over, but your time, and your time with those you love, doesn’t have to be. You should think on what I’ve shown you. You have lessons still to learn.”

The ghost moved, and Dean followed, his mouth open and ready to protest, but he caught sight of a foot sticking out from under the ghost’s robes, and groaned.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got Want and Ignorance hiding under there,” he said. “Come on. It’s not Victorian England.”

The ghost, for the fist time since he’d turned up, scowled.

“It may as well be,” it said. “In many respects, it may as well be. Yet we have been summoned to bring a message to you, not of kindness and generosity to the poor, but a warning of a different kind of poverty. Think on it, Dean Winchester. My brethren and I are not called often, but when we are it is to those who have the power to change. If you were a lost cause, we would not be here.”

“We?” It couldn’t be time, already, for the last ghost. 

But the ghost in front of Dean shifted its gaze, fixing on something over Dean’s shoulder, and Dean turned and looked. The figure heading towards them, seemingly invisible to all around it, wore a dark robe, its head covered and no sign of its true face to be seen. 

Dean had faced more ghosts in his life than he cared to remember, he’d met the actual Death, but this sent a shiver through his whole body. The future was one thing Dean had never truly thought he would see.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean stepped back as the last ghost drew closer, his breaths huffing out white into the air. Painful as it had been to see his past, to see how parts of his past were doing fine, better than fine, without him, and hard as it was to see Cas doing well without Dean, it was nothing compared to what seeing the future would bring. 

What if Sam was doing just fine there without Dean? Because that’s what Scrooge had been shown, life without Scrooge in it. A life without Dean would do Sam just fine. Sam had bounced back and forth on that over the years, but he’d made it without Dean at Stanford, and he’d been building a life when Dean had been in Purgatory. Knowing it was one thing. Dean did not want to see it. 

He stepped back far enough to walk into the other ghost, and stepped back again. No ghost. He didn’t look around to check. This thing was unwinding eerily close to that damned book. The second ghost would be gone. 

“Stay back,” he said to the new ghost. “I don’t want what you’re selling. All right? I don’t. Just take your freaky-ass visions of the future and fuck off where you came from.”

His words had no impact on the ghost at all. It kept coming, drifting closer and closer to him. The dark space under the hood seemed menacing.

“I think I knew your cousin, or dad or something,” Dean tried, stepping back yet again and plastering a smirk on his face. If in doubt, bluster. It had worked before. “Death. You got the whole…” He waved his hand at the ghost. “The whole family look thing going on. You more traditional? Is that it? Because he was more into suits. And pizza. Oh, yeah, and did I mention I killed him?”

Threats didn’t work either. 

Dean caught sight of Cas, now holding a man’s hand in both of his, his head tilted in a way that said he was listening attentively, as the new ghost’s hand touched down on Dean’s shoulder.

When the scene came back, it was a roadhouse, smoky and dark, with people clustered round tables littered with glasses and light on conversation. Dean moved through it, catching snatches of what talk there was and wishing he didn’t know who they were talking about.

It had always pissed him off that, in the novel, Scrooge couldn’t work out which dead guy the gentlemen of London were discussing. Whose death did he think the ghost would want him to hear about? 

So Dean knew perfectly well that the death being discussed must be his own. 

He paused by a group who had more words between them than the rest of the room put together, wanting more of a clue than he’d picked up so far about what exactly had killed him.

“Surprised he went that way,” a woman wearing a waxed jacket said, staring morosely into her beer. “Thought he had more about him than that.”

“He saved my bacon more than once,” another woman said, shaking her head and setting her ponytail swinging. 

“Bet it’s not all he did to your bacon,” a third woman sniggered, and coughed as her laughter had her swallowing her whiskey the wrong way. 

The man next to her smirked, slapping her on the back.

“You’re just jealous, Sandra,” he said. “And it’s a crying shame there’ll be no more of that, but you’ll just have to cope with the stories.”

“Which are many and varied,” the first woman said. “Hey, Derek, didn’t the two of you hook up that time? Don’t hold out on me now. I’ve heard the stories from other people, but getting it from the source would be better.”

Derek shook his head, and Dean was torn between shock at the implication he’d spent a steamy night or so with this guy and the realization that Derek was the kind of good-looking you expected to see on posters, not in a bar. Dark hair and blue eyes and a build Dean envied. Still, this didn’t have the look of being too far into the future, and the hunting community had never exactly been what you might call open about sexuality. Sex, yes, if the people having it fell into the stereotypes expected, but for people to sit around and talk about Dean and Derek as though it was fine and well-known blew his mind. 

He found himself wondering what else had been blown.

Hey, at least if he had this in his future to look forward to…

“Oh, I don’t kiss and tell,” Derek said. “Besides, I hear that Sam Winchester’s mighty cut up about the whole thing, and he’s not got much sense of humour when he hears people chatting in a way that might seem less than respectful.”

The whole table of people shifted and resettled, as though trying to put themselves at some distance from anything Sam Winchester might not like. 

Ponytail pulled a face.

“It’s not like it’s disrespectful really,” she said. “If anything, we’re remembering some of his skills. And we all know he saved a load of people, and not just by hunting, but if we want to talk over some of the fun times, so what?”

Derek raised his eyebrows, the look on his face saying he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“Do you want to get on the wrong side of Sam Winchester?” he asked. “Phil?” The first woman shook her head. “Sandra?” Another shake. “Looks like it’s just you wants to get on his bad side, Janet.”

“God, and don’t even think about what will happen if the other one hears…” Phil said, and shuddered as though she was sensing the ghost stood just by her. “He is truly terrifying. He thinks you’ve said anything about-”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s not, all right?” Janet said. “I get the picture. We’ll stick to tales of how he saved that whole group of kids the other year. That makes him sound enough like a fucking saint to please either of them.”

“Probably safest if we don’t mention him at all,” Sandra said. “Those three? Always had strange tales attached to them. Half the stuff I’ve heard I don’t believe, and some of it I just don’t want to, but you’ve got to admit they were all good hunters, in their own ways.”

“Still are, two of them,” Derek said, lifting his glass and swilling his drink around.

“How long exactly do you think it’ll last now?” Sandra asked. “I’ve met all three of them, and the energy between them…”

“They ever get together?” Phil asked, her tone speculative. “Not Sam. Dean and Cas, I mean. Because I just saw them together a few times, but the stories… Wow.”

“Not that I know of,” Derek said. He shrugged. “But the Winchesters are a law to themselves. Who knows? Anyway, I’ll get in some drinks. Everyone having the same?”

Dean saw the scene dissolve before he’d fully taken everything in. Hunters, because it was clear that’s who he’d been listening to, were scared of Sam. But they were more scared of Cas, by the sound of it, who’d gone back to hunting, trailing a whole load of rumours about his relationship with Dean behind him. Cutting Cas off hadn’t saved him from it at all. 

But Cas had been helping Nora at a soup kitchen. He’d looked set to get out, to get a life helping people in a healthy way.

When his vision cleared, he was inside the bunker. The sound of movement drew him down the hallway and into the library, into the same place he’d been when that damned ghost had pulled him from his chair. 

Sam sat at the table, a bottle by his hand. There was no glass. The look on Sam’s face was glassy and blank, his eyes red-rimmed, and he looked to be on the verge of falling face first onto the table. 

“Fucking idiot,” Sam muttered, his fingers tightening again on the bottle and dragging it to him. “Had to go and try to do it by himself. Couldn’t just ask for help. And now… and now…”

Dean had seen Sam cry before, but this? By himself, in a room with no sign of anyone else, Sam sat and cried for Dean, and Dean couldn’t miss the fact Sam was angry as well as grieving. Dean had done something stupid. That was clear. If Cas was still in the hunting world, and he was, if the talk in that roadhouse had been accurate, then why was Sam here on his own? 

He lifted his hand, fully intending to reach out to Sam even though Dean was just a shade here, but he felt everything shift again, and he was in a graveyard. It was dim, early evening, with the last pinks almost washed out by the purples and blacks in the sky. 

Not far away, a woman stood by a headstone, her eyes showing she’d shed enough tears already. Nora. Dean felt something cold grip his insides. 

“Ghost?” Dean asked, looking around and finding the spirit just behind him. “Ghost, why’s Nora crying? That’s…that’s my grave, right? Tell me it’s my grave.”

The ghost pointed, its robe covering its hand, and Dean followed the direction to see a man walking up the path to the grave. Fuck. It was Dean. Older, greyer, but unmistakably him.

Dean watched as the older version of himself reached Nora, his steps heavy and his face set. She turned, holding her arms out, and he stepped into them, holding her tight as they both stood in front of that stone. They stayed like that, looking like they’d run out of words and needed to cling to someone just to keep from sinking into the earth themselves. 

“That’s not…” Dean had to stop and take a breath. Start again. “That’s not me, in the grave?”

The ghost shook its head, the cowl moving.

“Then who is it?”

But he knew. It couldn’t really be anyone else.

Walking slowly, feeling more dazed than if it had been his, Dean rounded the gravestone and came to stand next to his older self. The letters on the stone were fresh cut, large. 

CAS

“I never got why you called him that,” Nora said, the side of her face pressed to Dean’s chest. “But he always lit up when you called him and used it. Everyone noticed. I…I always thought…”

She cut herself off and buried her face against Dean’s jacket again, and he carded a hand through her hair, his eyes blank and staring.

“I know,” older Dean said. “I know.”

Neither one of the them said anything else, in all the time Dean stood there, looking from them to the gravestone to the ghost. This didn’t make any sense.

“He was doing fine,” Dean said to the ghost, and he pushed on even when his voice broke. “And he was an angel. He should still have lived for… And Sam said he didn’t ask for help. He…he didn’t mean Cas, did he?”

The ghost shook its head.

“So, me.” Of fucking course it was. “I went off and didn’t ask for help, and somehow that got Cas killed. Did he come after me? Save me?”

A nod.

“I pushed him away and he just kept coming back,” Dean said, the pieces falling into place. “I can’t keep him out of this can I?”

He didn’t need the shake of the head this time.

“I can’t keep him out. I can’t keep him safe. If I…if I ask him back, if I try to do something about this thing between us…will he still die?”

He wasn’t sure if he was asking if Cas would die at all, or just this soon. He didn’t know if Cas, however far they were in the future, had died with or without his Grace. He didn’t know why he’d stayed dead. It was clear that he had. However many lives Cas had, they’d run out. 

He knew he broke a little when the ghost tilted its head.

“You don’t know? Even if I take my ‘lesson’, he might die? Like this?”

The ghost moved forward, towards Dean, and stopped close to the stone. It set its hand on the cold marble, fingers just peeking out from the end of the robe, and lowered its head. 

Dean jumped when it spoke. This ghost wasn’t meant to speak.

“Castiel’s fate is ever uncertain,” it said. “For an agent of fate, he has slipped through its threads time and time again, avoiding destiny and rewriting that of others. But he chose to tie himself to you, and the only safety you can offer him, the only life over death, is to acknowledge his choice. How you do so is up to you.”

As the ghost spoke, the area around Dean shifted, fading out until he was no longer looking at the last resting place of his best friend, a grave which should have been his own, but was standing in the bunker. No ghost stood near him. He was alone.


	8. Chapter 8

The chair and whiskey sat where he’d left them, the circle of salt still held its shape and the iron had fallen to the floor and rolled a few feet away. To make himself feel better, he poured another whiskey and picked up the iron. Like it would do any good. 

Besides, if the book was right, the ghosts had done with him now. He should be throwing open the windows and getting some boy he didn’t know to send a turkey to Cas. Or something. 

Instead, he had another few whiskeys and sent a message.

In the morning, he was waiting outside next to Baby when Sam pulled up, frowning at Dean as though not sure his brother was free of some spell. The car door clanged shut, the sound carrying in the still air, and Sam crossed to Dean with the car keys still in hand. Dean got the feeling Sam would be in the car and off again if he didn’t believe what Dean was selling, looking for Cas.

“Relax,” Dean said. “I found him.”

He kicked at a stone, watching it skitter away over the ground, and couldn’t quite look Sam in the eye. 

“I, er, I thought about calling him, getting him to come back here and do Christmas. Get decorations, a turkey, the whole nine. But…”

Dean shrugged.

“But what?” Sam asked, apparently not in a mood to let Dean off that easily.

“But then I thought, he always comes when I call. Maybe this time we should go to him.”

And he knew he’d made the right call in Sam’s eyes when his brother stopped frowning, and smiled. 

The ride was quiet, Sam not asking what had made Dean change his mind and Dean not offering it up. He still had a lot of thinking to do about the whole thing. He’d spent the night thinking over a lot of crap, and he was almost sure what his biggest regrets would be, if the future panned out the way he’d seen it go, but that was a world away from being okay with just…just acting on it. Like that. No warning. 

Sam threw him a smile every now and then, and got out to fetch coffee from gas stations with no whining, so Dean figured at least the Christmas spirit was getting to one of them.

They pulled up in Rexford just before lunch the next day, Sam having insisted they stop for the night half-way, despite Dean saying that fourteen hours was nothing of a drive. Dean headed straight to the low house he remembered from last time. He had no idea where Cas might be staying, but Nora would know.

With Sam beside him, he knocked on the door and his words almost failed him when Nora pulled it open and stared at him, her mouth forming a tiny O before shifting into a gentle smile. She stood back, waving an arm in invitation.

“He’s in the other room,” she said, her eyes flicking briefly to Sam but settling back on Dean. “And if you’re here for him, then come in. If it’s going to upset him…”

“I’m here for him,” Dean said, firmly. “Uh. We’re here for him.”

He left Sam standing on the porch, hearing Nora ask if she should put on some coffee, and tried to leave his embarrassment behind as he made it through into a room with a sofa and two chairs. And one angel.

Cas looked up at Dean from a book he was reading, and his face only made it as far as shock.

“Dean?”

As though now Dean really was a ghost.

“Yeah. Hi, Cas.”

And his words failed him. He’d had all sorts of things planned out to say, things about wanting Cas in his life and the guy making his own choices and sorry, please just forgive me for being an ass, but they all dried on his tongue as he stared at those eyes. 

It had clicked in Dean’s head part way here that all those people in the bar, Janet and Phil and Derek and Sandra, hadn’t been talking about Dean’s reputation, because Dean hadn’t been dead and cold in the ground. No. No, it was Cas so many people apparently had fond memories of. Including Derek. 

“How long have you been into dudes?” Dean asked, which was not what he’d meant to say.

“I…” Cas stopped, his nose scrunching up and his head tilting. “What?”

“Men, Cas,” Dean said, because once he’d picked a path the easiest thing to do was to stick with it. “How long have you known you’re into men?”

“For sex?” Cas asked, as though Dean might mean something else.

“No, for chess. Yes, for sex.”

At that moment, Dean heard footsteps behind him, and heard them turn sharply and leave. Screw it. He hadn’t driven all this way to back out now, however much he hadn’t been sure he could do this. 

“Dean, I’m not human,” Cas said, standing and stepping closer, until he was his usual distance from Dean. “Why would it matter?”

He sounded worried. Shit, he didn’t think…?

“Hey, I didn’t drive all the way here to lay into for liking some ass, okay?” And he pushed right on before the look on Cas’ face could decide what to turn into. “I came here to see you, to invite you back. If…if you want. But you don’t have to. I saw your place. It’s real nice, Cas. And you have all those cards from people. You’re making friends, huh? And then you’re here, helping Nora feed people who’re out on the streets. It’s good, Cas. Real good.”

“Yes,” Cas said. “Yes, I suppose it is.” He looked at Dean with that stare that reached right in to Dean’s heart. “What exactly are you offering, Dean?”

And there was an opening if Dean ever heard one. He wasn’t going to throw away all of his lesson from last night.

“Everything, Cas,” he said. “Christmas, to start. Wherever you want. And then, if you want, me.”

“You?”

“Yeah.” He managed a smile, even if it came out lopsided. “Not sure I’m ready to slap a bow on me, but, play your cards right.”

“A bow?” Cas’ face didn’t shift from the frown he’d developed, not for a long minute. Dean saw the moment the angel got it, his eyebrows lifting and his lips twitching. And he flushed red. “A bow,” Cas repeated, somehow managing to get his voice even lower. “Which cards would I have to play?”

Despite meeting the truly fucked up Cas in the Croatoan infested future, and hearing about a different version of Cas in the ghosts’ future, that comment hit Dean hard. Looked like Cas had the potential to be a lot of fun, as well as the closest thing to a guardian Dean had. And hot. He’d told himself over and over on the drive to just admit it. Cas was hot. Dean was into him. And Cas, going by the look in his eyes, was, like the universe had been screaming at Dean for longer than he’d been able to hear it, into Dean.

“We’ll figure that out,” Dean said, and reached out.

Cas met him halfway. Of his own choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it. A completely, if rather short, story. 
> 
> God Bless Us, and similar. And may Dean and Cas have hot, kinky sex, making lots of use of bows.


	9. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean did mention a bow could be possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's totally not necessary to read this, but I figured one conversation wouldn't be enough to tip them over the edge and into bed.

Christmas was a riot of people and food and celebration, part spent at Nora’s and part back at Cas’ place, even with the long-ass drive in between. Turned out Cas knew all kinds of people and liked to spend time around them, which was news to Dean. 

It was Sam who muttered in Dean’s ear, the third time Dean was about to explode, that Cas had spent billions of years as part of the Host. The last few years of repeatedly losing everyone didn’t meant Cas wanted to be alone, just that he kept finding himself that way. 

Dean thought about it further as he watched Cas smile at Nora over the turkey, as he helped Cas serve food down at the soup kitchen. He thought about it as he watched Cas host a gathering at his little house, cookies and drinks and other treats turning up with each guest and a whole bunch of folk lighting up to see Cas. He thought about it some more when Cas slid into the Impala and settled down with a sigh. Dean almost asked Cas again if he wanted to come back to the bunker, but he bit his lip and slid the car into drive.

Cas was only visiting, anyway. They hadn’t made a firm decision on whether he’d move in with them properly. 

All three of them were quiet when they arrived at the bunker, Sam vanishing to his room with a yawn as soon as he’d told Cas and Dean goodnight. 

Dean found himself standing in the library, only a few feet from the spot where the ghosts had visited him, trying not to stare too hard at Cas now he had him to himself. That kiss at Nora’s had been great, as far as it went, but they hadn’t touched since, not more than they usually did. Dean wasn’t sure if Cas had somehow misunderstood something, or if Dean had. 

The last few years had eroded some of that understanding the two of them used to have, and Dean wasn’t sure if it was more he’d never really got Cas as much as he thought he had. Perhaps it had just been that next to his brothers and sisters Cas had seemed…not human. That was wrong. But relatable, somehow. The guy was let down by his dead-beat dad, had his faith destroyed, and got smacked by life more than Dean did. Dean could connect with that pain. 

“You know, it’s strange,” Cas said, right in the middle of Dean’s musing. His eyes were fixed on something off to the side. At least, it looked like it was. Dean still felt like Cas was staring right at him. 

“What is?” Dean asked, when Cas didn’t go on. 

The corners of Cas’ mouth twitched and Dean could have sworn his eyes were an even brighter blue than normal. He held himself still, some tightness about his shoulders. Dean had no idea how to read him right now.

“I’ve spent years not understanding what I feel for you. And when I did come to understand, when I was working with Nora and struggling to understand everything from a perspective I never thought I’d see, I also came to realize that what I felt was something I should not expect you to return. I think…maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe.” His smile grew enough that the corners of his eyes crinkled, even though to most people it would still have seemed restrained. “You offered me yourself. Yet here we stand, further apart than we often have in the past, despite the fact I seem to remember talk of bows.”

Dean choked. 

“What?”

Cas’ eyes slid sideways until he looked right at Dean. There was more heat there than usual.

“Did I not play my cards right?” Cas asked, with a naivety that used to fool Dean.

“You fucker,” Dean said, knowing his face had gone blank. “All those years I spent buying your innocent crap-”

“Not innocent, Dean,” Cas said, turning his head to face Dean properly. “Never innocent. Just different. You can’t imagine how it was, to walk on the earth for the first time in so long. The first time at all, as far as I knew. How well would you do, if you were to find yourself a thousand years ago, on another continent, speaking a foreign language and navigating foreign codes? Would that suddenly make you innocent?”

“Er. No.” 

Dean’s mouth felt dry. Cas was putting out some serious vibes, but fuck if Dean knew exactly what they were saying. Was he angry? Amused? Aroused? 

“No,” Cas said, sounding pleased, like Dean had gotten the answer right. “So, not innocent. Not naive. Learning. And I thought I’d learned you, Dean. I thought I’d worked out the translation.”

Cas could be hinting at so many times when he implied he’d got the translation wrong, or been made to think he had. Dean decided to take it for all of them.

“I’m sorry, Cas. I fucked up. Just tell me what you want translating, all right?”

“Yes,” Cas said. He stepped towards Dean, not breaking eye-contact. “I’ve many things I want you to translate for me, but let’s start with what you said at Nora’s. When you offered yourself to me, what exactly did you mean? Because I thought I understood, when you made the joke about the bow, and I don’t want to be wrong about this.”

There was some tension in Cas, now, slipping through the cracks in his words, but he still seemed…hopeful. Dean got the feeling Cas was pretty sure of his translation on this and just wanted to hear it as clear as he could. And there was that glint in Cas’ eyes… Dean remembered how an angel needed to hear consent. 

“That?” Dean asked. He took a step himself, bringing them closer together, and from this distance he knew he was right about that heat in Cas’ eyes. The guy was interested, all right. That kiss hadn’t just been some custom Cas had got mixed up or a feeling he had to do what Dean wanted. He’d worried a little, when Cas hadn’t reached for him again. He supposed Cas was all too used to being rejected. “That was me offering you a place in my life, Cas. And in my bed.”

Cas nodded, a tiny dip of his head. And he waited. 

Dean’s lips twitched. 

“Look, Cas, I am not good with words. You know that.”

“You do fine when you need to make an end of the world speech,” Cas said. 

“Yeah, well. This isn’t end of the world.” Dean rushed on as he caught the dimming of the light in Cas’ eyes and the way Cas’ shoulder tightened further. “But it’s just as important to me. Shit. I’m crap at saying this and you’re dictionary’s full of holes. Hang on. Just…just give me a minute.”

Because Dean’s habit of swinging into action when words failed him wasn’t going to be enough, here. Oh, he could get Cas into bed. He was sure of that now, and pushed aside his minor panic over the difference it would make to them and his regret over all the time he’d wasted. Getting Cas horizontal and naked was only part of the goal, though. He wanted Cas for good, and he couldn’t afford that to get lost when it went through whatever algorithms Cas used to work out Dean’s meaning.

Shit. He was either going to have to get all of this out in direct, impossible to misunderstand words or he was going to have to take action which even Cas would get, and short of carving Cas’ name on himself…

“Wait here.”

Dean left Cas standing in the library, skidding to a halt and sticking his head back into the room as a thought struck him.

“I am not leaving you, and you are not to go leaving me. Got that? This, me and you? It’s on. Just gotta get something sorted. You wait right there, Cas.”

Should be enough to keep him on that spot.

Even so, Dean moved as fast as he could, scrabbling round his room to find what he needed and dashing back to the library within minutes. He heaved a sigh of relief when Cas frowned at him from the same spot.

“Come on,” Dean said, gesturing for Cas to follow him. 

He felt jittery as the angel did just that, trailing him back to Dean’s bedroom and inside. When Dean shut the door behind them, it felt like they’d crossed some threshold. 

“So, er, you asked what it meant. I figured I’d show you.”

Cas was still frowning, his head tilting in a way it didn’t do nearly as often these days. Dean waited as Cas’ eyes traveled round the room, settling briefly on the partly open drawer and the materials on top of the dresser. 

“Ribbon,” Cas said flatly. “I don’t understand. What is this supposed to be telling me?”

There was a hint in his tone that he thought he did see it, and didn’t want to be wrong. Dean had seen Cas hold himself carefully before, but now he was almost completely still by the foot of Dean’s bed, caught in that weird tension, that small smile looking like it wouldn’t take much to coax back. Wouldn’t take much to drive Cas away, either.

“Heh. Yeah.” Dean felt foolish, but he needed to get this through to Cas and keep it light enough it wouldn’t cripple the both of them, or the only thing they’d be doing tonight was having one of their intense conversations that left Dean drained and needing a drink. “About that…”

He pushed away from the door and unzipped his jacket, watching Cas’ eyes refocus on the movement. That was a good sign. Dean hadn’t put on a show for anyone in years, not since before Hell, but he bit his lip and slowed down, moving smoothly as he pulled the jacket open and let it fall to the floor.

“Dean,” Cas said, and he had to be getting it now. Even Cas could only misinterpret this so many ways. 

Dean had ditched his flannel and T-shirt, leaving him wearing nothing from the waist up. Nothing except some of that red ribbon, tied over his chest. He’d managed a pretty decent bow, he figured, given how little time he’d given himself. 

“I said a bow,” Dean said. “You get a bow.”

Cas glanced up to meet Dean’s eyes and swallowed. 

“You gonna read the tag?” Dean asked, before he could lose his nerve and bluster his way out of this. 

Not out of seeing where this went with Cas, although the ‘best friend’ part of the equation was throwing him as much as the being open about being with a guy part. But this game, which he hoped would get his intent over to the angel, could go wrong and leave Dean feeling and looking foolish.

“Of course,” Cas said, just as Dean was beginning to think he should give up. 

Cas’ attention dropped to the bow as he moved right into Dean’s space, those long fingers reaching out and tracing the edge of the card Dean had used for the tag before turning it over. Cas scanned the words, his eyes moving, and he blushed. Cas blushed. 

Dean was going to have to find ways to make that happen again.

“Make sense now?” Dean asked, his voice hushed.

“Um. Yes.” Cas’ reply was even quieter, and when he looked back up at Dean his eyes looked shiny in a way that hinted Cas was closer to tears than had been the plan. “Thank-you, Dean,” he said, reverent and heartfelt. 

Dean didn’t know how he could do that, just put himself out there, especially when it hardly ever worked out for the guy. Well, it was going to work out this time.

“No problem, Cas.” 

A smile pushed itself onto Dean’s face as he reached up and touched his forefinger to the underneath of Cas’ chin, tilting his friend’s head up until their mouths were close together. He felt Cas’ breath ghosting over his own lips, setting them tingling, and pressed a kiss to Cas for only the second time. 

Cas’ lips gave under Dean’s, parting quickly, and Dean nipped at Cas’ lower lip before deepening the kiss, still holding Cas’ head in place. He felt his own breathing change as heat rose in his body.

“Cas,” he said eventually, pulling back just enough to speak and feeling Cas chase him. “I need out of the rest of these clothes. And we should use that bed. We’re not as young as we were, buddy.”

“Relatively speaking,” Cas said, “I am barely any older than when you first met me.”

But he let Dean slide his hands down Cas’ body and under his shirt, stroking up his stomach. Cas shivered.

“Lose the clothes, Cas,” Dean said.

Cas’ eyes widened, and Dean took note. He’d never been able to read which way Cas would be in the bedroom, sometimes deciding Cas would like to be guided and sometimes thinking he’d rather be in charge, and then chastising himself for think of Cas that way at all, but that was the sort of thing they could work out now. Maybe Cas would like both. Dean did. 

Either way, Cas stripped out of his shirt far more quickly and with far less elegance than Dean had done it with the jacket, leaving the shirt on the floor and making equally quick work of his pants. Dean pulled his own jeans off, glad he’d already gone barefoot as soon as they got home, and reached for the bow. Cas set his hand over Dean’s and shook his head. He looked a bit hesitant, but determined.

“Could you… Um.”

“You like the bow, huh?” Dean asked. 

Cas nodded.

“Well, it might get uncomfortable, but we can leave it for now.”

Cas frowned again.

“Not if it will make you uncomfortable,” he said, and that was the caring side of Cas that told Dean he should grab hold of the angel and never let him go.

“I’ll tell you if it does,” Dean promised, and pulled Cas back into a kiss.

Cas went willingly when Dean maneuvered them to the bed, dropping back onto it and pulling Dean after him so they slotted together on top of the covers, only their boxers and that winding piece of ribbon, tag still attached, stopping it from being full-frontal. 

By the time Cas’ fingers wandered back to the bow, pulling it free and unwinding the ribbon from Dean’s body, Dean really wasn’t thinking about anything but the heat and shape of Cas under him, the way the guy was staring to move and the sounds he was making. The tension in Cas had melted into another kind of intensity now, and Dean was remembering all the times he’d seen Cas focus on a battle. That sort of focus on sex was looking like a real possibility and Dean didn’t have any attention to spare for the ribbon or its tag.

He didn’t notice where Cas dropped it, just that it was gone and Cas could get his hands on every inch of Dean’s skin, especially when his boxers went the same way a few moments later. There were no translation issues here.

The tag landed on the floor, partway under the bed, where Cas would find it later and take it to stick between the pages of a book he’d been keeping for years, a book with scribbled notes and crossings out and question marks. A home-made guidebook to humanity. The tag deserved a special place, a kind of Rosetta stone to Dean.

‘For Cas. 

I want you,

Love, Dean’

If Cas kept the ribbon, too, that was something Dean could get behind.


End file.
